The Grand Paradise

January 30th - December 31, 2016New York

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The Grand Paradise

January 30th - December 31, 2016New York

About the Project

Set in those hazy and culturally liminal years of the late 1970s becoming the 1980s in the United States, The Grand Paradise was an immersive theater work that combined experiential theater, a late 1970s tropical resort, and a fountain of youth that promised to quench deepest longings. Greeted with a tropical drink and a garland of flowers, visitors encountered the resort’s resident population; characters who embodied the era’s shifting and blurring values. Audiences explored the resort and beaches, watched a floorshow, followed performers into one-on-one encounters, where faded ideals might be traded for shiny new illusions.

Video

Videography by The Pekoe Group

Photos

Photography by Adam Jason Photography, Darial Sneed, and The Pekoe Group

PRESS

"Using the ’70s as a time frame turns out to have been an inspired idea... 'The Grand Paradise,' the latest and lushest of the many immersive theater spectacles to set up camp in New York in recent years, traffics in instant nostalgia. Created by Third Rail Projects, this interactive tour of an imaginary Floridian pleasure palace from the 1970s manages to summon romantic promise and regretful retrospection in a single, ocean-air breath." - Ben Brantley

"...The show is created to make audience members feel like protagonists, which is why everyone has the freedom to explore and interact with it on their own terms. That’s why we go through the trouble to find these things that trigger memory and trigger a personal response. There’s been a fascination with seeing if there’s a way to create some part of an emotion in a theatrical experience—if there’s some way to take you back to what you felt like in a particular moment. And smell is a big part of that.” – Mark Blankenship/Jennine Willett, American Theatre magazine

"Every audience member's visit to The Grand Paradise" is different; as a work of immersive, dance-based theater, it requires the guests to make their own way, following characters and story threads that pique their interest. In the show's two hours, there are any number of sights to be seen, events to experience and interactions to be had — and it would take a few visits to get the full picture.” - Alex Biese

"I realize I’ve only seen two Third Rail Productions, but I’ve come out of both feeling so incredibly connected and engaged with that I immediately wanted to turn around and go back in, just to recapture that feeling… The long and short of all this is, should you see The Grand Paradise? Very much yes. Go, and go with an open mind, and a readiness to engage and explore and flirt. If your night was anything like mine, it will be a highly rewarding and transformative experience.” - David Baxter

"This was by far my favorite aspect of The Grand Paradise: the intimate scale of the performance, which allows for a deeper engagement and more communal experience… I know I'm likely to search for paradise again, and I can assure you that you'll have a grand time if you do the same. I also look forward to seeing what Third Rail Projects will do next, as it's high time someone took a more nuanced look at immersive theatre.” - Bess Rowen

"Like the theatre company's long-running, Alice in Wonderland-inspired 'Then She Fell', its new interactive show takes place in a multilayered fantasyland where all of your senses are stimulated -- yes, even taste, touch, and smell. However, 'The Grand Paradise' is produced on a much grander scale, with 60 audience members and 20 performers frolicking in a late-'70s, hedonistic, tropical resort where adventures and awakenings await. And, in large part, you determine your own fate.” - Raven Snook

"Since Third Rail began creating site-specific and site-adaptive work in 2006, their productions have been inextricably tied to the spaces in which they are performed… [The artistic directors] and the rest of the creative team have been able to fine-tune every aspect of the experience.” - Darryn King

"Third Rail is leaving behind the Victorian era of 'Then She Fell' and transporting audiences to more recent times: a hedonistic Florida resort in the late 1970s that may or may not contain the Fountain of Youth. There they will be guided through the kind of curated one-on-one interactions that make 'Then She Fell' popular, while also having the freedom to choose their own scenarios."

"Brooklyn-based experiential dance theater company Third Rail Projects is capitalizing on the current success of Then She Fell in Williamsburg, which allows the audience to be more involved in the show, and is bringing that concept to Bushwick with a new act." - Liam La Guerre

Creative Team

Created by Third Rail Projects

Directed, Designed, Written, and Choreographed byZach Morris, Tom Pearson, and Jennine Willettin collaboration with The Company

Thanks also to our 2015 Kickstarter backers who helped make this work possible.

The development phase of The Grand Paradise was made possible, in part, with initial support from Governors Island, Materials for the Arts/New York City Department
of Cultural Affairs and Department of Sanitation, The [QuA2D] Art Mill Residency
in Jeffersonville, NY provided by Daniel Castellanos & John Wenk, Third Rail’s fiscal sponsor Fractured Atlas & Artful.ly; and by Third Rail Projects, with support from
individual and institutional donors, and volunteers. Third Rail Projects also extends
its sincerest gratitude to Arts Brookfield for its significant support throughout the
development of The Grand Paradise.